


Don Your Mask

by AriWrote



Category: Spirit Hunter (Series), 死印 | Shiin | Death Mark (Visual Novel)
Genre: Brief Description of Corpse, Gen, Perhaps one could read into more romantic intentions, WIP, Yasuoka gets to experience full noir Mashita basically, but nothings really going one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:15:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21625924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriWrote/pseuds/AriWrote
Summary: Yasuoka goes to Mashita for help with a case.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	Don Your Mask

**Author's Note:**

> This was Once Upon a time meant to be a Longish Chapter fic, but I'm Meh on returning to it. However, it was a decently little Scenario and figured I'd toss it out since there's so little content in this fandom.
> 
> Tagging is Sparse because I don't know if I'll ever return to this. If I do expect things to change and more to be added.

Stepping into the dingy little office Mashita has chosen to set up in for his new P.I. job, Towako is almost startled by the chemical clean scent of lemon mixed with the cloying aroma of incense that seems a physical presence in the room. That was not to say that she expected some kind of pigsty akin to the upper floors of the Kujou mansion, but there were certain behaviors expected of Mashita—incense-burning was not one of them.

It is almost a relief when she moves from the waiting area to the office proper and the heavy scent of smoke and nicotine powers through the burning cedar hanging in the air.

She finds Mashita bent over a thick stack of files. A cigarette is perched between his fingers, burnt low and inching ever closer towards skin. A quick glance at the coffee cup he's using as makeshift ashtray reveals three burnt filter swimming in a little puddle of sludge that may have once been coffee.

Files are scattered along the top of his desk, their contents hardly contained by thin manila folders. One is opened just enough to reveal images of gore that make Towako suck in air through her teeth and shudder.

“You just missed Suzu and Christie,” Mashita says, not even looking up from where he seems to be glaring at a half-smudged notebook filled with childish scribbling. Well, that explains how clean the waiting room had seemed.

“You’ve conscripted the poor girl into cleaning your office, as well?” Towako replies. She aims for good-natured teasing, but her voice sounds shaky even to her ears.

His eyes catch Towako’s as they flit back to the photo (a child. Barely thirteen. Bloated, and stomach slit wide-), and his elbow nudges it beneath another stack of water-damaged paper as though by accident. He laughs, tossing the sad remains of his cigarette into the coffee cup where it fizzles and dies. “Wouldn’t say that. She bullied me. Christie’s a bad influence on her.”

“If anyone is a bad influence, I sincerely doubt it would be Christie,” Towako says. She settles down in one of the chairs that Mashita has set aside for his prospective clients.

“Perhaps,” he says, leaning back in his chair. His hands reach towards his pocket, as if going for another cigarette, before they pause and return back to his side. “What’s brought you here? Usually when you’re pawning these cases off on me, you do it over the phone.”

“It’s-” because I knew you’d hang up, “-a special case. A friend of mine personally requested I get your help.”

“Oh great,” Mashita says, lips curling into that deprecating smile that fits so well onto his face. “I’ve gotten popular with your crowd now.” His eyes leave Towako to focus on a flickering light above her; he lets out a long-suffering sigh. “I don’t have the time. Get Yashiki to do it.”

“You haven’t heard the details yet,” Towako huffs. “Is he working for you now?” She’s heard from several people that Mashita had been trying to bring Yashiki in as partner for months now, and that the two had even worked together on the last case she had ‘sent his way’.

His shoulders tense. When he looks back at Towako, the smile is gone. It is not imagined bitterness that taints his clipped, “No.”

“Ah,” is all she can really manage to say. The air grows thick with the tension, silence settling between the two. There’s a land-mine there which she has no interest in agitating, at least for now, and that she isn’t sure how to avoid.

Mashita chooses to do so for her. “Tell me about this ‘special’ case. I’ll pass it onto Yashiki.”

Towako does not say, “There is no need.”

Nor does she say, “You are not subtle.”

Instead she says, “An old acquaintance of mine is hosting a ball this week, and claims that several mysterious incidents have occurred that have made him wonder if something spiritual might be at work. Some of the waitstaff have claimed they were harassed by an unfamiliar masked figure that would disappear if approached in the days leading up to the ball. One woman was even injured when she fell down a flight of stairs after, she claims, the figure appeared and scolded her.”

“Sounds like he’s got a guest who doesn’t know when to mind their own business,” Mashita says.

“Perhaps,” Towako agrees, “though he claims that no guest arrived until the first day. That isn’t why he wants your help, though. The ball is on it’s third night, and each morning the mansion seems to have found itself a little emptier. He suspected at first that it was the usual loss one would see at a party, but then last night-”

“Let me guess, someone he actually care about went missing?”

Towako nods. “His sixteen year old daughter was nowhere to be found this morning, and he has a terrible suspicion that it’s only the beginning of something much worse.”

Mashita’s laughter is a hoarse, unpleasant sound.“He’s not even given a thought to calling it off?”

“I suggested as much, but he refused. Many of the guests are being housed on the property, and he fears there would be more chaos if he called it off.”

“So, what does he want you to do?” He leans forward, his chair clattering as it’s front feet meet the ground.

And here was the part Towako had been dreading. “ _We_ would be invited as guest, given boarding for the remaining days of the party, and try and determine what was causing the issue. He currently suspects that it may be one of the ‘cursed’ objects he’s collected over the years.”

Surprise is a weird look on Mashita, she decides. “What was that?”

“He has the unfortunate habit of purchasing reportedly ‘cursed’ items. It’s one I’ve tried to convince him to give up, but it’s yet to work. He’s never run into any issues until now.”

“Let me get this straight,” Mashita says, once the surprises has melted into something like mild amusement. “He collects cursed objects.

“Yes.”

“And when people start to go missing, he decides it’s better to risk more people going missing than to stop it?”

“Correct.”

“And we’re still going to help him?”

“I do believe that’s the right thing to do.”

“Damn,” Mashita says, “Yashiki can have this case.”


End file.
